Teachers will be calling for an end to pay inequality as the Irish National Teachers Organisation Annual Congress gets underway today.
Some 850 representatives will be urging the Government to tackle the pay disparity between teachers hired after 2010 and their longer-serving colleagues.
The conference gets underway in Killarney this afternoon.
INTO President John Boyle says new primary teachers aren't getting the pay they deserve:
“Today’s 150th INTO congress is going to be focused on pay – particularly on equality issues within primary teaching.
“The first one being that primary teachers who qualified since 2010 have been treated very, very shabbily by successive Governments and are 3 or 4 points behind on the salary scale.
“They are not being given equal pay for equal work – so that is going to be the dominant focus.”
The event will also examine industrial relations and education issues; the funding of schools, workload, curriculum and special needs teaching.
The union represents 35,000 primary teachers in the south and 7,000 in the North.
Mr Boyle has said principals are also owed pay from the state:
“Our principal and deputy principal teachers are owed a debt from Government,” he said. “An independent award was not paid in 2008.”
“Ten years later, they are certainly next in the queue because they feel they are being treated very shabbily as well compared to post-primary principals and deputies who are paid a lot more than that.”
The Education Minister Richard Bruton will attend the conference tomorrow and the event will conclude on Wednesday Afternoon.
